I NEVER KNEW SANTA CLAUS

I was never taught that Santa Claus was a real person who rode in a sled bearing gifts for good children, sliding down the chimney at night.  For one thing, we didn't have a man-sized chimney.  Even an elf would have wound up in our wood stove instead of an open fireplace, so that part of the story fell through even if my parents were inclined to tell me this lie.  I was a child of dual cultures, although it is seldom expressed this way.  I lived in a community off Highway 211 where my mother's people were Seventh-Day Adventists.  Some of them barely tolerated Christmas because its traditions were a mishmash of several religion's festivals and, therefore, not considered purely Christian.

Most of my mother's community did tolerate Christmas.  We had a Christmas tree in the foyer of our church/school house, we drew names at school for gifts, and we always had a Christmas play where every year I hoped to be chosen for the part of Mary and never was.  When I was very small, I was one of the adorable line of angels in paper halos covered with gold glitter who paraded down the aisle with candles dripping on paper candleholders. Later, due to the shortage of boys at the small country school (grades 1-8 in one room, one teacher), I was drafted to serve as a shepherd.  I rather got into the role, proudly stomping around, carrying a crooked staff (or a close approximation.)

We always had a Christmas tree in our house, beautifully decorated by my mother, and always Christmas gifts although there was no hanging the stocking by the chimney with care.  (no chimney, no money to fill a sock with extras.)  One of my favorite Christmas eve memories is of spinning merrily with my arms outstretched in pure glee -- right into the Christmas tree.  My mother didn't scold me since I didn't break anything and tipped the tree only a little bit.

My father's people, across the marsh near Delco, weren't Adventist, and they embraced all aspects of Christmas.  Nativity scenes melded with Santa Clauses and I was aware that my little cousins on that side of the family actually seemed to believe that Santa Claus was not only comin' to town, but that he was coming way out into the woods where we all lived, none of us with a working fireplace, but comin' just the same.  My mother turned up her nose at such silliness.  She made it clear from the minute I heard the name Santa Claus that he was just another fairy tale, same as Mother Goose.  My mother wasn't an especially religious Adventist, so I don't think her objection to Mr. Claus was religiously based.  Her reasoning was simple and practical:

Every gift under that tree was acquired through hard work, scrimping, and sacrifice, and the idea that some bozo in a red suit would get all the credit was outrageous.  Children should know, said my mother, that their parents were the givers. 

Despite the fact that Santa Claus was nobody in our house, Christmas was still exciting.  My parents concealed larger parcels until Christmas morning, and one Christmas when we were house-sitting a friends' hotel (long story there), I was banned from going upstairs for several weeks while my parents merrily and secretly rode my new English Racer down the long upstairs hallway.  We didn't need Santa, and I never missed him, although there turned out to be a downside to this for my mother one December day in downtown Wilmington. That was the day that she suddenly got it into her head that it would be cute to have a photo made of me sitting in a storefront Santa's lap.  I knew his visage from drawings and wrapping paper, but Santa in the flesh was an alien concept to me.  Mother pushed me toward his bearded form before I knew what was what.  "It's just Santa!" urged my mother when I balked.  "Santa Claus!"

But Santa had no reality for me, and certainly no appeal. I was causing such a scene that she had to give up the idea.  Later, I recall that she patiently explained to me all about costumed Santas, and that it was just a cute way to take Christmas photo.  So the next year, I willingly approached the bearded man and had my picture taken although I was perplexed when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas.  That wasn't a question that adults usually asked me, although my mother would give me a fair hearing on the matter, usually explaining to me why we couldn't afford a swing set or a dollhouse. 

One year, though, they got me the Jumping Shoes I craved.  They were bright red strap-ons with springs, and I eagerly tried them out, expecting to fly over the roof.  But alas, the shoes wouldn't budge because I didn't have enough weight to make an impression on the springs.  Still, I'll never forget the wonder of the illustration of an airborne kid, and the thrill of opening the package and realizing that my parents had somehow managed to purchase my dream.

I never felt that our Christmases lacked something by not having Santa central to the secular side of it.  For me, it was every bit as wonderful to have gifts from my parents, family, and friends as it would have been to have gifts hauled in from the North Pole.  In fact, I have always wondered about the breach of trust involved when children learn that their parents lied.  There are enough lies floating around in families that we surely don't need a Santa Claus lie on top of it all.

However, from my observation of families who lie about Santa, no one seems to suffer permanent damage from that particular lie.  It appears that it is a sort of rite of passage when a child realizes that Santa is a fairy tale.  Along with the disillusionment comes the privilege of stepping into the knowing circle of older people, and the merry mischief of fooling the little kids.
     I get that, I really do, I think...

THE JESUS, JESUS PICTURE and Other Stories

THE JESUS, JESUS PICTURE and Other Stories is now available on amazon.com. 

I had fun with this cover.  Since most of the stories were taken from my teenage years, I did a drawing from a photo of me at about the age I was when I wrote "The Shell" (which is included among the stories.)  I always felt so cool in that hat!

WHY I BECAME AN INDIE WRITER

People always ask, when you say you are a writer, "Have you ever been published?"

This is especially true when you are an "Indie" writer, independently producing your own books.  The idea behind the question, I think, is two fold.  1) Okay, you're a writer, but how serious are you?  And 2) Are you any good?  Being good at something, in our society, is measured by how much people are willing to pay you. Or if they are willing to pay you at all.

My personal opinion about becoming an indie writer is that it is wise for the writer to have proven herself by at least having sold something to a publisher.  One doesn't have to be famous, one doesn't even have to have sold enough to give up the day job.  But one should at least once have submitted some sort of writing to a publisher who paid for the privilege.  One must prove oneself worthy.

That is my prejudice, and it may be a cruel one because getting published isn't easy.  It isn't easy even to get a response from a publisher.

It is trial by fire, as is acting or creating art.  You tear off a piece of your soul and offer it to people who don't want it, and usually you get ignored for the effort.  There is a reason that there is such a high suicide rate among creative people.  It isn't because you have to be crazy to be creative (although that helps).  It's that you have to be very tough indeed to endure the amount of rejection that comes with plying the trade.

I am very tough.

I have been rejected many times.

I have continued to ply the trade.

And I did get published.

And then, despite the notion that it's easier to get published once someone has slipped up and published your work once, it is not easier, not really.  But I eventually did it again.  And again.

It is good if one can find one's nitch.  If you find your nitch, it does get easier.

And it is good to take the advice of writing what you know.  This helps you find your nitch.

I was published in several genres, but the one with which I was most familiar was the Seventh-Day Adventist youth market, because I had been a Seventh-Day Adventist youth, and boy did I have stories to tell!

The Jesus, Jesus Picture and Other Stories is a collection of the stories I sold to SDA publishers.  Several of my stories won prizes, two of them were published in a book.  

I proved myself to myself.

But when it came to publishing my books, I have chosen to bypass publishers because it takes so long to get through the process, because some of the process strikes me as unfairly biased against writers, and because I simply love to design and illustrate my own books.  What I have given up is publicity.  My fame is spreading slowly because I don't have a publisher behind me.  Maybe in time, after I have satisfied my urge to produce full blown books all by myself, I will submit again to a book publisher.  But for now, I'm happy being an Indie writer.

So in case I failed to mention this clearly before, my soon to be released new book is The Jesus, Jesus Picture and Other Stories.

I'll let you know when it is available.

A Sense of Humanity

This is how I write.

Often, I have to draw in order to write.  Church School Blues would still be struggling to become a book if I couldn't draw.  This is partly because I didn't want to go back to that awful time in my life.  Drawing helped me see it in color even though my drawings were mostly black and white.

Drawing helped me see the ridiculous clothes of the seventies, Drawing helped me get on my bike in my 11-year-old body and FLY!  Drawing helped me see Willie Swan even though I didn't have a photograph of him and never saw him again after I was twelve and the scandal blew all over our community.

I didn't have photographs of many of people in my story, but my hands remembered.  Like a crime sketch artist, I kept tracing and re-tracing my memory until I got a fair likeness in my mind.

My getting-in-touch sketches were face-on, but the sketches in the finished book are all in profile.  I did this partly in honor of my younger self who was fascinated by Egyptian wall murals where everyone is in profile.  Partly, I did it because profiled faces flattened the look of the scenes.  When one is abused, the world goes sort of two-dimensional.  You don't look out of your eyes in a normal fashion.  You lose all sense of eye-contact as you lose touch with other human beings.  When one is abused, life becomes a cartoon where one seems to be the indestructible wabbit whose wounds don't bleed from the outside.

In about half of the illustration panels my character, Jade, seems to be trying to walk or project herself out of the scene.  In one of my favorite panels, Jade has turned into a sphinx which has also positioned itself looking away from the action in the school room toward whatever alternative is beyond the edge of panel.

Through drawing, I was able to get in touch with my sense of humor about those times.  There is nothing funny about being bullied and isolated, but the world itself and people's quirky personalities contain unexpected gifts of humor that can make hard times bearable.  I had a well developed sense of humor as well as a sense of the absurd as a child, and I think that this aspect of my character helped me retain a measure of perspective.   The worst outcome of being bullied is that both the bullied and the bullies tend to lose their sense of humanity -- their own and that of other people.  But humor keeps one in touch so that one can survive with a spark of self intact.

A sense of humor, and the ability to draw, took me back to those haunted days without turning me inside out, and allowed me to see past the flat panels of pain to the color and the humor that accompanied me on my difficult journey, so that there were times as I wrote and as I drew, that I laughed out loud.

PRECIOUS JEWELS CHARACTER DIES

John Thomas "Jack" Wagner

1935-2013

Jack had a walk-on part in Chapter Fifteen "The Old Homestead", but it was an important part because his preference for the wistful youngest daughter Faith over her man-stealing sisters changed her life.

Passage from PRECIOUS JEWELS about Jack.

In addition to glads in the summer and teaching in the winter, Ralph continued to work in pulp wood. His son was his constant companion at his labor, and Lester was cheerful and industrious, not given to the rebellion of his sisters. What Ralph didn't expect was that one of his daughters would turn her hand to pulp wooding as well. Faith, still casting around for a sense of place within her family, chose to position herself alongside her brother.

Ralph let her come along because her presence allowed him to innovate on how to load the wood. They needed a team of three for Ralph's strategy to work. Most people loaded each 5-1/2 foot log by hand, but Ralph had mounted a boom behind the cab with a cable running through it with a hook. Ralph stood on the truck, Faith attached the hook to the log, and Lester backed up the tractor, pulling cable and hooked log up to Ralph. Ralph placed and unhooked the log, and Faith was ready to take the hook back to the next log.

Ralph's "hookman" was a crucial member of the team, but it didn't occur to him that she needed to be told so. He might slap his son on the back in satisfied camaraderie, but he didn't slap his daughters on the back, and when her brother strolled along with his father's arm draped across his shoulders, the hookman watched them wistfully.

Faith might be able to keep up with a logging crew, but when she dressed up, she was every bit as pretty as her sisters. She looked older than her age, so the young men who dated her sisters paid her attention also, unaware that she was six years younger than Joy. Even Joy didn't take into account the age difference. She was making a great game of breaking up other people's relationships. It was a rare fellow who could withstand Joy's charm when she turned it on. "He's cute," she might say upon spying one of her sisters with a new fellow. "I think I'll take him away from her!"

Both of her sisters had fallen victim to Joy's game playing. Joy was now in the process of taking over the correspondence that Garnet had going with Mason Malpass who was now a sailor on his tour of duty. "They always liked each other," Joy said to Faith. "He's liable to come back home and marry her once she comes to her senses and leaves that old Bill. Let's see if I can get him before that happens!"

Increasingly the red, white and blue airmail envelopes from oversees were addressed to Joy instead of Garnet. Even Grace wasn't pleased about this. It had always seemed to her that there was something special between Garnet and Mason with their shared musical abilities and the way they sparred. Despite the fact that Garnet had proven that she was not likely to languish away her life as a spinster, her mother still felt protective of her.

But there was one young man who seemed immune to Joy's games. Jack was tall, muscular, with a handsome baby face. He had taken Joy out a time or two, and he had also gone out with Garnet. But he made Joy edgy the way he seemed to look right through her little wiles, while Garnet tended to have long, serious relationships. Jack wasn't ready to get serious. At least, not until he noticed Faith. She resembled Joy in her looks, but she didn't have her careless banter. Faith saw him eyeing her and she glowered back at him. He was smitten.

Faith would never forget the day of their first date. She had gone out in the woods as usual with Ralph and Lester and they had worked until the weather turned. A tropical storm was blowing in when they got home, and the willow fronds were blowing sideways in the gale.

"Tell Mother to come home," said Ralph to Faith, and his daughter obediently hopped out of the cab and dashed up the dirt drive toward the Babcock house where Grace had spent the day with her mother who wasn't feeling well.

Ralph and Lester went into the Denton house, and Lester was standing at the window of his attic bedroom peeling off his dirty shirt as Faith reached the pine tree at the curve of the driveway across from the Babcock house. Just as his sister reached the tree, a bolt of lightning hurled out of the sky and struck it. He heard the ripping crash and saw the searing flash — and he saw it reach out to Faith.

"No!" he cried, already in motion. He thundered down the steps past his Dad, who called after him, saw that his son wasn't stopping, and followed. Faith lay face down in a mud puddle as the tree beside her burned. Lester scooped her up in his arms and kept running. Grace had the door open and she stepped back as her son staggered past her and laid his sister down on the bed.

"Oh my soul!" cried Grace, as Pearl pushed her way past them to examine her granddaughter. Faith was already struggling to sit up. "I'm f-f-f-f-f-f-f-ine." she stammered, but she couldn't stop shaking.

"Give me my robe!" snapped Pearl, and Grace grabbed the terrycloth wrap from its hook.

They got the girl out of her wet dirty clothes and swaddled her in Pearl's robe. It was too bad that Faith was in shock and wouldn't remember much of the next few hours because she was, for once, the center of her family's attention.

"Dear Jesus, my poor baby," said Grace, her arms around her, rocking her, nearly as stunned as Faith. Her prayers were garbled, an illogical plea to save her from what had just happened and a prayer of thanksgiving that she wasn't hurt badly.

Lester tried to lighten the mood. "Hey, maybe you'll have a scar like mine!"

Faith glared at him through the cradle of her mother's arms. "I d-d-d-d-d-d-don't w-w-w-w-w-w-want it."

"Sssssh," said Grace, sternly, "You're upsetting her. Poor baby, we'll take you home and tuck you into bed for the night and I'll bring you some supper in bed.

But this had the opposite of its intended effect. "N-n-n-n-ooo! I have a d-d-d-date with J-J-ack!"

"You can't go anywhere until you stop shaking like a leaf." proclaimed Pearl.

"All of you stop making her talk," said Grace. "Let her rest and if she feels like seeing him tonight, then she may."

By evening, Faith's nerves were still jangled but she was determined to keep the date. By the time Jack arrived, she was ready to go. Ever after, when she told the story of how she had been struck by lightning and had gone out on that date anyway, she would say, "And I am so glad that I did!"

For Jack turned out to be Faith's future husband, and with him she would find where she belonged.

----

In Memory of Uncle Jack from his "Favorite Niece." *

*Rumor has it that he told each of his nieces that she was his favorite, but I know the truth!  

A Paper Doll Legacy

I'm the first!  At least I think I am the first to design a Seventh-Day Adventist paper doll.  I can remember playing paper dolls as a child and thinking, as with most books and television characters, that paper dolls are secular.  They don't go to Sabbath School, they don't have Bibles.  And, of course, you don't play with them from Sunday Friday to Sundown Saturday because that is the Sabbath when we leave off the activities that we enjoy and toil over during the week.

With the paper dolls from Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga, one might possibly play with them on Sabbath, since Pearl and her girls, Ruby and Grace, spent a lot of time with Bible studies and various forms of ministry.  When and how they are enjoyed is up to you.

If you have read Precious Jewels, you will know that some of the characters in the book played with paper dolls.  My mother and her sisters cut their dolls out of old catalogs.  My mother told me that when they were small, they floated the paper dolls in paper boats down the canal.  The launching was a lovely image, but Mother was vague about what happened when the paper soaked through!  I imagine that the bottom of the canal is strewn with ancient paper doll Titanics.

When they were older, my mother and her sisters still played paper dolls, creating elaborate soap operas around them.  My Aunt Garnet was so much into the stories that she even enjoyed them after she was grown, and I confess that one reason I became a writer was because I was told that I was too old for pretend games!

As a child, I was fascinated with the old photographs of my great-grandmother Pearl and her family, so it was inevitable that sooner or later they got new lives as paper dolls.  I just completed the set of clothes for the young Pearl, and her daughters Ruby and Grace are now on my drawing board.  To learn more about them, visit the paper doll section of my website.

New Book of Old Short Stories

Before I published books, I sold short stories and articles to various publications, but most of my stories were sold to Review & Herald Publishing Association, publisher of the Seventh-Day Adventist magazines, GUIDE MAGAZINE, INSIGHT, and INSIGHT/OUT, and which were also included in one of their anthologies of "unforgettable stories"  It has been suggested to me that I publish a collection of these stories together under one cover.  Since the stories are already written, this book should be easy to produce -- except for one thing -- the all-important cover.  Here are some mock-ups.  Do you have a favorite?

My Almost Best Friend

I want to tell you about my new friend.

She went to academy with me in the CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES days.

She was in my class.

She hung out with some of the people who had bullied me.

So I thought she was against me too.

We recently met again on Facebook.  And we have been chatting.

It turns out that she would have liked to have been my friend then.

But I wouldn't speak to anyone.

She told me that people thought it was by choice that I was silent.

That I wore pretty clothes and had beautiful hair and acted like I wanted nothing to do with anyone.

She didn't know that I was silent because I couldn't get the words out,

couldn't meet anyone's eyes,

because I was ashamed.

She didn't know the secrets that I kept, didn't know my story.

She didn't try to know because she didn't dare.

I was scary in my aloofness.

And I didn't know she would have been my friend.

I didn't know she would have liked to have had a friend who was imaginative,

creative, and unusual like me.

I didn't know she would have liked to have been friends with ME.

We didn't know.

I think the moral to this story is that not everyone is against you, although it may seem like they are.

We weren't young and stupid.

We were just young.

We lacked the perspective that we have now,

where I might have been able to better discern between my enemies and possible friends

and she might have been able to see past my sphinx-like exterior.

We are busy catching up now.

I would like to introduce her to you.

Her name is Lynda.

She is a singer and a music teacher.

We're going to do some creative stuff together.

This is Lynda's website.  Visit it if you like kids and music and karaoke.

Pictured above: Me (left) and Lynda (right).  We happened to be standing together in the class photograph, but I'm sure I never said a word to her!

Airborne All The Way!

Jack "Jacky" Denton Bixby

10/27/1945-1/2/1966

Born Graceton, Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota

Died Hau Nghia Province, South Vietnam

Remembering my cousin Jacky today.  He impacted my childhood both through his life and death although I only met him a few times.  He is mentioned several times in Church School Blues.

Jacky was real cool. He took Nick and me riding on his motorcycle.. He was a paratrooper whose slogan was "Airborne All The Way!" -- Church School Blues

~~

Mother and I pay close attention to the news when it tells about POWs being returned home, because she still hopes that it wasn't Jacky's body that got shipped back. She has heard stories about the military sometimes shipping back an old boot instead of a body, and that old boot could be anybody's. So as long as there are POWs, Mother is hoping that one of those young men she sees on the news will be the handsome brown-eyed face with the cleft in the chin that we all admired so much. -- Church School Blues

~~

Mother is sobbing. The last time I heard her cry like that was when she got the news that Jacky was killed in Viet Nam. -- Church School Blues

~~

And finally, the famous scene where the history teacher, Mr. Rivera, shouts at the class for having no awareness of the war in Viet Nam, and a kid's response and inner thoughts about the war.

"You folks don't seem to care that there is a war going on!" says Mr. Rivera, and his thick dark eyebrows shoot straight up behind his glasses.

There is some shifting in seats, but suddenly everybody in the room has become a silent kid.

"It's not real to you, is it? And why should it be? It hasn't touched you personally. Let's see a show of hands," he says suddenly. "Has anyone in this room known someone who has been killed in Viet Nam?"

Mr. Rivera thinks this is a safe question since he has known most of these kids for years, taught their older brothers and sisters, knows their families personally. But it hasn't occurred to him that he no longer knows everyone in the room. As I raise my lonely hand, I see Rebecca raise hers also.

"Thank you," he says, his voice going softer. "There are two students in this room for whom the war is very real. For the rest of you, I urge you to pay attention to the news. This country is being torn apart over this war—some strongly believe that it is right to send Americans to fight wars on foreign soil, and others believe just as strongly that we should stand apart from the conflict. At the moment, you don't have an opinion, but as Americans, each one of you should."

I silently agree with him, although even I haven't given much thought to the question of whether the war is right. I know that Jacky wanted to be a paratrooper, and he wanted to do his patriotic duty. Although I don't think of myself as "from the coast" I was close enough to several naval bases in North Carolina that the sight of servicemen hitchhiking was a common one, and I loved the sight of battleships in the Cape Fear River—not because they were killing machines, but because ships are cool. I admire the clever design of military stuff, whether it is a ship or a uniform, a canteen, a compass or a multi-purpose sailor hat.

I could go on and on about all the cool stuff I've seen, having grown up close to naval and air force bases, but there is one image that has impressed itself onto my mind as if my eye were a camera. It's of the sky over some barracks—maybe at Camp LeJeune or even Fort Bragg. I was pretty small, so I'm no longer sure which base it was, but I think the sea was near, so that would make it LeJeune where we visited another cousin who was in the navy. The sky is that certain blue that it only achieves back home where there is so much water, and the flag of our country flies so crisp and clear in its nautical colors of reds, whites, and blues, that a person could just break down and cry for love of America.

So I guess maybe I do have an opinion on whether the war is right. I think that all war is wrong, wrong, wrong, insane and stupid. But I am an American and I believe that we should go where America sends us and defend our flag, even if America is wrong about where our flag is flying at a particular time. Of course that's easy for me to say, since I'm a girl and am in no danger of being drafted in a few years to serve in some war that doesn't have anything to do with freedom. But if I was a boy, I think I'd be a Jacky.

After class is over, Mr. Rivera takes Rebecca and me aside.

"I apologize for asking what I did about losing someone in Viet Nam. I didn't realize anyone in here had been personally affected by the war."

I look at him straight in the eyes. "It's okay."

"May I ask who you lost in the war?"

For some reason, I can talk now and I speak proudly. "My cousin. Jacky Denton Bixby. Airborne All The Way."

Rebecca has lost an uncle in the war. It is something else we have in common, so Rebecca and I start sitting together at lunch, standing near each other at recess. But being silent kids, we don't do a whole lot of talking. -- Church School Blues

  

The Hunter

"The Hunter" is a companion story to "The Jesus, Jesus Picture".  It tells the story of my grandfather's desperate quest for love after my grandmother died.   "The Hunter" was the second prize winner in INSIGHT'S 1991 writing contest.  Some of the incidents in this story also appear in the narrative of CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES.

Grandma wasn’t dead and buried six weeks when Grandpa started looking for a new wife.

“It’s too soon,” said Tory’s mother. ‘‘I don’t know what’s wrong with my dad.”

Grandma’s death had been unexpected. She had been in good health, still teaching school at the age of 69, when without warning she died in the middle of the night with a mild case of the flu.  Mama and Tory’s aunts agreed that it looked like Grandpa hadn’t loved Grandma very much, starting up so soon with ideas of marrying again.  Tory didn’t know what to think. She was 12 when Grandma died. She was still 12 when Grandpa started his campaigns to find a new wife.

Grandpa, always logical, was methodical in his search. He called to mind a number of women he had known in years past, or whom he had met and knew to be without a husband. Then he wrote to two or three women at a time.  The whole thing just didn’t seem respectful to Grandma’s memory, nor to the women he canvassed like a salesman.  The aunts said he was getting senile, and it was true that, of late, there was a tremor in his handshake and a shuffling to his once-confident stride.

But Tory’s mother remembered, “He always approached romance in a strange way. When he proposed to Mother, he had proposed to another woman, also. We were lucky Mother could make a decision very quickly — she said yes first.”  Tory listened to the conversation between her mother and her mother’s sisters and thought, If Grandma hadn’t been so quick to make up her mind, none of us would have been born. It made her queasy to think by how narrow a chance the whole lot of them had managed to exist.

Grandma had been a 32-year-old schoolteacher when she married Grandpa. It had all happened in the northern woods of Minnesota, where the trees were still thick in Tory’s time (she had seen them once, on a trip when she was 10). Houses and people, and perhaps eligible women, were few and far apart.  Later Grandpa and Grandma moved their fledgling family south to a land that was just as thick with trees, and almost as lonely. There they built a school and taught the gospel.

Tory remembered Grandpa when he wasn’t as old as he was now, still strong and independent. She remembered when he ruled his classes of seventh and eighth graders. He was stern and exacting, yet able to tell a good story. Even now, with his steps turning to shuffles and holding a cane he didn’t know quite what to do with, he had a way of catching a person off guard with that keen look Tory remembered from better years.  He just doesn't think like we do, she thought.  He’s the last pioneer, thrust into a world of television and freeways and keeping up appearances.

In her fifteenth year Tory saw the last passenger trains come to Chattanooga. The newspeople said that tractor-trailer rigs were running trains out of the business of hauling freight, and that the family car and the airplane had replaced the passenger train.  But when Grandpa traveled across the United States to visit a lady on the West Coast, he went by train. He returned by way of Chattanooga, where Tory and her parents now lived.  Tory and her mother went to the depot to meet him. The old train station’s grand lines were obscured by dust and litter. Derelicts slept in the shade of the platform. Like the broken men that took refuge under the roof, the depot was a derelict, a thing of the past.  When the train came in, Grandpa was the only passenger to disembark. He paused on the step, one hand on the rail, sun on his white hair.

“Daddy!” called Tory’s mother. ‘‘We’re over here.” She started forward to take his suitcase, but Tory hesitated, struck by a sense of history. That proud old man with the handsome, haggard face, standing so erect on the stoop of that train, and the train itself, were of an age . The passenger train had just about had its time. And Grandpa, with that gleam in his eye from having just blazed a trail across the country, had about had his time. Already his ways of thinking, his ways of finding a wife, were obsolete.  Don’t go, thought Tory to the train and to her grandfather. Don’t go.

‘‘Tory!” called her mother. ‘‘Don’t just stand there. Come take his other suitcase.”  Tory obeyed, while Mama took Grandpa’s arm and helped him off the train. Tory followed them, feeling bewildered. She recognized that he must feel the same bewilderment. How can things change before you know it? How can this be the last train?

The West Coast courtship had not been successful. The lady had been kind, but the outcome was clear. Grandpa had returned alone, and there were no plans for future visits.  But Grandpa was undaunted. ‘‘While I was there, I succeeded in obtaining the address of Nora Brady. You remember Nora, don’t you, Lisa’?”

Tory’s mother nodded . ‘‘ I remember Mrs. Brady. She taught school with you and Mother for several years.”

‘‘Well, you’d never guess where she is now. She’s gone back to the northern woods, and is still teaching school !”

‘‘ She must be almost 70.”

‘‘Seventy-one,’‘ said Grandpa. ‘‘She never remarried after Mr. Brady died. She was a good Christian woman. A good woman.”  Grandpa had already sent a letter to her, mailed from the West Coast.

Tory’s mother suddenly looked exhausted. She had expected him to arrive discouraged, perhaps a little wiser, ready to calm down and accept the fact that he was old. His health was failing, and on top of that, he was a pauper. What other woman would be willing to live like Grandma had lived? Grandma, sharing his zeal to spread the gospel, to teach, to serve, had spent as little time keeping the home as he had. All they had was a tiny, dilapidated travel trailer and an unfinished two-room cabin in the woods.

“Mrs. Brady probably won’t answer the letter,” said Mother quietly to Tory. “He’s watching the mail, and he’s going to be disappointed again.”

But the 71-year-old schoolteacher in the northern woods did answer Grandpa’s letter. The letters of Nora Brady followed Grandpa from house to house as he became more dependent upon his children and they shared the task of caring for him. He became confined to a wheelchair, and still Nora Brady wrote.

“She can’t have any idea how feeble he is,” said Mother. “She thinks he’s still the way he was 25 years ago.”

Grandpa’s handwriting grew shaky, and then he could hardly write at all. His mind sometimes wandered to places in the past, and to other places no one could recognize. But the part of him that was Grandpa watched for the mail, and Nora Brady kept writing.  Soon his replies were returned to Mrs. Brady in Tory’s best script. She knelt by his wheelchair, scrupulously taking down every word, each unique turn of phrase, so that the letters she wrote were entirely his own.  Grandpa’s letters were scholarly. The historian came out in him as he described the founding of schools and the progress of townships. He chronicled his own life. At the end of his letters, as at the end of Mrs. Brady’s, was always the same text: Romans 8:28.

As Tory sat on the floor by Grandpa’s chair, she looked into the past with him. Grandpa was a time machine, his words transporting her backward. Her eyes became dazzled by the northern lights, she thrilled to wolf calls as sharp and clear as the winter snow that buried the northern woods. She trekked with him on snowshoes across the frozen land, where not a light could be seen beneath the stars.  Every day she was with him she urged him to tell her more. He might soon disappear with the passenger trains, but she, Tory, would save everything.  She felt herself aging—aging backward. Sixteen now, she felt her memories stretch further back than she was old. She breathed in the chill air of lost Minnesota nights, and shivered in the Southern heat of her own time. 

“Grandpa,” said Tory as they finished a chronicle to Nora Brady, “your letter is missing something. A woman you are courting wants to hear, well, something about how you feel for her.” So “with love” was added to Grandpa’s letters.

As soon as school was out, Nora Brady wrote that she was coming south to see him. Grandpa was delighted. For a few days he seemed to regain some of his vigor. But time was running out, and Grandpa’s will and Tory’s will put together couldn’t stop its progression.  As school drew to a close in the north, Grandpa declined. He was staying with Aunt Cecily now, more at ease in her Smoky Mountain home than in Chattanooga’s smog and traffic. Too weak to get out of bed, he held tight to his notion that Nora Brady would come. Mrs. Brady would come, they would get married, and live in his cabin in the woods.

Nora Brady did come. The family told her how badly Grandpa’s condition had turned, and she still came.

The first time Tory saw Nora Brady, she was applying medication to Grandpa’s bedsores. Though his emaciated body was beyond repair, the woman from the north sat calmly on the bed beside him, ministering to him with tender, gnarled hands.  This was something no one had expected. Even Tory, who understood Grandpa’s need to keep loving, had not dreamed it would be returned in this measure.

And Grandpa, always the hunter, the logical seeker, now had to stay in one place while something illogical like love came to him.  Nora Brady became his nurse, his companion, his comforter, his sweetheart. Behind her serene gaze, Tory sensed a story, one that had never been told, that perhaps never would be told. Had Nora Brady, all those years ago, loved him in the privacy of her heart? She did not say. She did not speak of her feelings. Her ministering hands, her constancy, spoke them for her.  Tory remembered Romans 8:28:  “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”

A few months later, Grandpa died—peacefully, gently, in the arms of Nora Brady.

The Jesus, Jesus Picture

Since it has been quite a few years since some of my favorite stories have been in print, this blog seems like a good place to re-print them for those who missed them the first time around.  This story was first printed in 1990 InsightOut magazine after it won first prize in their writing contest.  Six years later, it was chosen as an "unforgettable story" and reprinted in Review & Herald Publishing Company's anthology, Insight Presents More Unforgettable Stories.  The same story was recently retold in the final chapter of  Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga.

AS soon as Grandma died, various relatives, relatives by marriage, and relatives by association showed up and combed her house for keepsakes. By the time Tory arrived from Tennessee, the Jesus, Jesus picture was nowhere to be found. And no one seemed to know what had become of it. The immediate family had their own upset over the disappearance of Grandma’s piano. Tory could understand why the piano had been taken. Even though it was old, it had sounded good. And other things in Grandma’s house had value. But the Jesus, Jesus picture wasn’t one of them. It consisted of a plain print decoupaged on a pine slab. It had hung on Grandma’s wall so long that years of dust had embedded in the bark, and the shellac had cracked into spiderweb tracings across Jesus’ face.

After the funeral Tory went outside and sat in the shadow of the willow tree in front of Grandma's house. Winter had stripped it in the same way Grandma’s house had been stripped. The same way death had stripped her life. If only Tory could find the Jesus, Jesus picture. It would be Tory’s link with Grandma, something tangible they had shared. Grandma used to play the piano and sing hymns to her. When Grandma sang the words “Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know,” she would finish by pointing to the picture that hung on the wall beside her. “That’s Jesus,” Grandma would tell Tory. “That’s who the song is about.” So in Tory’s mind the picture became known as the Jesus, Jesus picture. As a child Tory had found it remarkable that Grandma owned the very picture that had inspired a famous hymn!

But Tory’s own concept of Jesus had come, not through the hymn or the picture, but through Grandma herself. As Tory sat beneath the winter willow, she realized that Jesus had always merged with the identity of her Grandmother. Was it sacrilegious to think this way? When Tory saw a picture of Jesus, sometimes His face merged in her mind with her grandmother’ s. Well, she assured herself, this simply meant that Jesus had shown clearly through Grandma. It didn’t mean she thought Grandma was Jesus. Satisfied with her resolution, Tory stopped wondering about the merging. But she didn’t stop wondering what had happened to the Jesus, Jesus picture.

Three years later Tory visited her cousin Pia in the Smoky Mountains. Tory shared Pia’s bedroom, a room made dark by the hulking shapes of antiques. The antiques were legacies from great-aunts, elderly cousins, and assorted shirttail relatives from her mother’s previous marriages. It was quite by accident that Tory dropped her brush one morning and had to look under Pia’s bed to retrieve it. Kneeling on the hand-woven rug, she lifted the edge of the quilt. There was the Jesus, Jesus picture! Tory touched it, leaving a finger trail in the dust that coated the image of Jesus. She could hear Pia’s voice in the kitchen and Aunt Cecily’s laughter. Tory was alone with her discovery. This is my Jesus, Jesus picture, she thought. It’s mine because I love it more than anyone else could. She wiped away the dust with the edge of her sleeve. Then quickly she stowed the picture between the extra blouses in her suitcase.

As she ate breakfast with Pia and Aunt Cecily, Tory wondered how the picture had gotten under Pia’s bed. Was it just a convenient storage place—or had Pia stashed it there to treasure? But I’m Grandma ‘s granddaughter by blood, Tory thought. Aunt Cecily was Grandma’s stepdaughter. So I should have it. Then Tory remembered that January when the two girls were 12. Tory had sat controlled and silent at Grandma’s funeral. Pia had cried through the whole service. Had Pia’s tears been easy tears of the moment—or were they wrenched from the heart, like Tory’s silence’? Who could say? Tory couldn't get Pia’s tears out of her mind, though. So she waited till her cousin was brushing her teeth. Then Tory crept hack and returned the Jesus. Jesus picture under Pia’s bed.

After Aunt Cecily went to work that day, the girls hit on an idea. “Hey. let’s make out our wills! With appropriate solemnity they crowded together under a Tiffany lamp. They began their wills with identical sentences: ‘‘I, _______, being of sound mind and body, do so bequeath….”

Tory’s estate consisted mainly of her clothes, purses and shoes, old toys, and a modest record collection. Pia’s estate was more substantial. She owned an antique rolltop desk and a few other pieces of furniture of her very own. But Pia was a little short in the way of clothes. “Would you like me to will you my big sweater with the glitter on it?” asked Tory.

“That would be awesome,” Pia answered brightly. “I’ve always wanted it.”

“OK,” said Tory. “It’s yours. To Pia Roby I bequeath my big sweater with the glitter.’’

“Now, what should I will you?” asked Pia.

Suddenly things became serious. “Will me that picture of Jesus that used to be Grandma’s.” said Tory.

“You mean that one under my bed?”

“Yes! I’ve looked for that picture ever since Grandma died, and, um, I sure would like you to will that to me.”

Pia’s eyes turned black like they did on the rare occasions when she got serious. “You know, Tory, I suppose I will die first. Me being older.’’ (Pia was four and a half months older than Tory.) Things going their natural course, Tory thought. I should possess the Jesus, Jesus picture exactly four and a half months before 1 follow old Pia into the grave.

 “Do you think maybe I could sometime . . . borrow it’? Before you die’?” Tory ventured. Pia’s face went soft and sad. ‘‘I’ll give it to you now if you want it.”

“You will?” Tory felt like grabbing it and running. But she didn’t want Pia to sacrifice something close to her heart. “How do you happen to have it?” she asked.

“It always made me think of Grandma,” Pia said.

“To me it’s the closest thing to Grandma,” agreed Tory.

“With me too. I think I loved Grandma more than anyone else in my whole life. Pia’s voice was as sober as her face. The trouble with Pia’s seriousness, though, was she’d just have you convinced she was taking something seriously — then suddenly those deep, dark eyes would crinkle up and she’d burst out laughing. Tory had been fooled too many times to trust Pia. Still, Tory knew Pia had a deep and tender place in her heart. “I can’t take the picture,” Tory decided out loud. “Not if it means a lot to you.”

Pia went into her room and returned with the Jesus, Jesus picture. “Take it. You can will it to me.”

“Yeah. I might die first.” Tory cradled the picture in her lap as they finished their wills. She kept thinking of Grandma at the piano, singing and teaching her about Jesus. That memory should be her right to the picture. But what if Grandma had given Pia the same memory? Feeling like a softhearted fool, Tory slipped the picture back under Pia’s bed that evening. After all, it would probably belong to her someday anyway.

The next day the girls and Aunt Cecily headed to Tennessee to take Tory home. After Tory and Pia got tired of riding in the cab, they crawled into the back of the camper. Tory stretched out, watching patches of sky play across the window. Pia spoke in the dreamy silence. “Remember those stories Grandma told?”

“You mean her miracle stories?”

“Yeah. Do you think anything like that happens anymore?”

“It happened to Grandma. And we knew her. So it could happen, I think.”

“I don’t mean to be sacrilegious,” said Pia. “But Grandma seemed a lot like Jesus. She just prayed that time, and she got healed from that water moccasin bite. Most people would’ve died before anyone came.”

“We’re supposed to be like Jesus. So if Grandma seemed like Jesus, I guess she was doing things right.” said Tory.

“I’m glad I knew her,” said Pia.

Tory sighed. She wished she had the Jesus, Jesus picture. She guessed Pia, thinking Tory had it, was wishing the same thing. But Tory felt Christlike in that she’d given it up. Not like a fool at all. Grandma would’ve done the same thing.

Pia leaned close to the screen on the little camper window. “Hey!” she yelled to a guy standing by a small-town street. “Hey, fly-boy!” Tory giggled. Pia’s moods changed so fast! One minute she was worried about being sacrilegious. The next she was yelling at a cute guy.

Aunt Cecily parked for lunch at a picnic area outside of town. And that’s where Tory found that she did have the Jesus, Jesus picture. She discovered it slipped between the notebooks in her book bag. She snaked her hand into the bag to touch it, watching Pia outside spreading peanut butter sandwiches. She’d never understand Pia. Tory had always been the smart one—but Pia was the wise one. Pia had always been two steps ahead of Tory in anything outside the classroom. Pia outsmarted her many times. But just when Tory would decide never to trust her again, Pia would reveal a heart good and true. If Pia hadn’t cared about the Jesus, Jesus picture, she wouldn’t have troubled herself to put it in Tory’s things. You have to care, Tory thought, to know how important something is to someone else.

Tory slipped the picture out of the bag and turned the face toward the light. It didn’t matter who loved Grandma more. After all, Grandma’s legacy wasn’t the Jesus, Jesus picture. Her legacy was love. Tory glanced outside in time to see Pia stick the peanut butter knife into the jelly jar. Smiling, Tory slipped the Jesus, Jesus picture under the front seat. And this time she didn’t feel the same emptiness when she gave it up.

Six months later Aunt Cecily returned to Tennessee for a visit. “Pia has schoolwork,” explained Aunt Cecily, “so she couldn’t come. But she said this belongs to you.” Aunt Cecily handed Tory a towel-wrapped object. Tory turned away to hide the tremor in her hands as she unfolded the towel. The gentle eyes of Jesus looked at Tory through a spiderweb maze of shellac. “Tell Pia thanks,” she said, hiding in a simple sentence everything the picture meant to both Pia and her.   And Tory realized that the picture wasn’t just a connection to Grandma and her teachings - it was now a reminder of the love between two cousins.

~~~

For "Chrissie"

I first heard the following story during my CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES years when a classmate told it in front of our English class as part of an oral presentation assignment.  Her harrowing tale of Mother-daughter love stayed with me long after I lost contact with my classmates, so much so that I later based a short story on it, which subsequently won a writing contest at INSIGHT MAGAZINE.  I did make an attempt to locate her and share my published version her story, but we didn't have the internet then, and I didn't find her.  Now through the wizardry of Facebook, we have reconnected, and at long last I get to tell her that this story is dedicated to her.

Here is the story as it appeared in INSIGHT MAGAZINE's 5-7-04 edition.

as told to Debra Wintsmith

Chrissie!” my father says softly, like he doesn’t want to scare me. But even half asleep, I can hear the fear in his voice.

I don’t want to wake up. I want to dream it’s yesterday morning, with the sun coming up bright over the mountain, and my mother waiting for me to slip into her bed for a before-school visit.

No matter how early I get up, my mother’s always awake. Awake waiting for me. She says she sleeps in the daytime while I’m at school. I curl up beside her under the electric blanket, and we talk about what I’m going to do that day. I can tell her stuff that would bore anyone else to tears, like every single word Tray Knight said to me in the hallway. My mother is my best friend.

I don’t tell her she’s my only friend, that because of her I don’t really fit in. I think that would hurt her. But mothers aren’t in style at our school. If you don’t have a major blowup with your mother every day, you just aren’t cool.

The popular girls at school hang around in the restroom between classes. They spread out their sweaters and books on the floor and sit with their backs against the wall, dissing their mothers.

Ashley rules the girls’ room. Yesterday when I walked in, she was saying, “My mother had hysterics! All because she went through my dresser and found my sequined nail polish! You’d think I’d done something illegal!”

Melissa sighed in sympathy. “I think my mother actually goes through my purse.” A giggle.

I don’t know what she thinks I’ve got in there! She’s such a snoop.”

Dawn suggested, “Maybe you ought to put something in there just for her to find!”

“Like what?” shrieked Melissa through gales of laughter. “You think I oughta put a—oh, hi, Christin.”

“How’s your mom?” Dawn ventured.

I stepped over the line of legs to the mirror and ran a brush through my hair. “I think she’s better this week.”

“Oh, good.” The others had gone quiet. They stayed that way until I left. It was their way of being kind.

“‘Bye!” they chorused as I stepped out the door.

The door shut and their voices burst out again.

I’m a teenager too, but I could never be like them. Their mothers are their pet peeve. I grab every minute I can with mine. Because I won’t have my mother much longer.

Daddy is shaking me gently, his voice close to my ear. “Chrissie, honey, you have to wake up.”

It’s dark. The clock says 2:30 a.m. My heart clenches like a fist. “Mom—”

“She’s taken a turn, Chrissie. The paramedics should be here any minute.”

“No! No!” I shut my mouth tight, but inside I’m screaming. No! Please, Jesus, not yet! Not tonight!

As I grab my coat, I think for a second that I screamed out loud, because the room is filled with noise. Then I recognize the wail of the siren.

I ride with Mother in the ambulance. She can’t talk to me because of the life-support equipment, but as the van lurches around the twisting hills toward town, her eyes never leave mine.

I don’t talk either. But our eyes say a million and one things to each other. Remember when we went up the Blue Ridge Parkway and we had to talk you out of hugging the bear? Remember when you made me a birthday cake and all the frosting slid off? Remember. Remember. Yes! Yes! Always and forever! Me too, chrissie, I remember everything you ever told me. Even the tiniest little detail, I remember. Always! Always!

Car lights play eerily against the black highway. Somewhere behind us, going much slower, Daddy follows in the car.

I cry—tears that fall somewhere inside of me and don’t get anything wet. Mother keeps looking into my eyes, and I know she sees me crying.

Remember what I told you about Jesus? That He will take care of us no matter what?

Yes, Mother, I remember. I remember how I prayed and prayed to Jesus to please make you well. You told me I shouldn ‘t. That you were ready to go when Jesus called

you.

But not now!

The driver curses. How dare he use words like that with my mother right here, fighting for her life! I look up and see past him. We’re on the open highway, and a pickup truck is racing us.

I hold my mother’s hand against my heart and watch the joyriders swinging toward us, crowding the rescue van. Our driver grips the wheel and holds stubbornly on course.

Mile after mile we’re neck-and-neck with the pickup. Even with the windows up and the siren going, I can hear the heavy pulsing of their radio.

I want to scream, “Stop it! You’re going to kill my mother!” But I say nothing. I don’t want Mother to know what’s happening.

I pray. Please, Lord, help us stay on the highway. Don’t let us die. Please, don’t let Mother die.

I open my eyes, not realizing I shut them. Mother’s eyes are looking into mine. Chrissie, Jesus knows what is best. I’m ready to go.

But I’m not ready for you to go! Not yet! Not now!

I don’t think I say it aloud, but I hear a voice speak quietly beside me. It’s one of the paramedics. “Happens all the time, miss. People gettin’ their thrills offa playin’ chicken with us.”

“Don’t they know it—it’s an emergency?”

“They don’ care.” His big hand squeezes my shoulder. “But Jerry there, he kin drive with the best. He’ll get us where we’re goin’.”

I’m praying again. Please, please help Jerry. Help Jerry drive.

I watch Jerry’s scarred hands clenching the steering wheel. They hold steady as he presses the accelerator to the floor. I see the first lights of town. The pickup edges back into its own lane and falls back at the city limits.

I feel a slight pressure on my hand. Mother is reassuring me that everything is OK. We glide into the emergency zone at the hospital. The glass doors fly open, and orderlies rush out.

As they lift Mother’s stretcher, I stare at Jerry’s face. It’s rough like his hands and his speech, but there are cheerful lines around his eyes and mouth.

“Thanks, Jerry,” I say.

He nods. “Hope your mom does OK.”

I stand under the clear night sky, waiting for Daddy so we can go inside together. An hour ago I would have been running after the stretcher. They would have had to force me to stay outside in the waiting area. But for some reason I feel peace now. Maybe it’s just relief that we weren’t run off the road.

But no, it’s more. I realize that now, for the first time, I’ve released my mother into God’s hands. Your will be done.

If I lose my mother tonight, I know I’ll never be able to replace her. But she will leave something I can take with me the rest of my life. Remember! Yes, remember.

In the short time we’ve been given, we’ve forged a powerful love. Other girls battle their mothers. It will take them years to forgive, to accept, and to love each other. Mother and I have found a calm.

“Chrissie, are you OK?” Daddy comes toward me out of the dark parking lot.

I slip my arm around his waist. “Yes, I’m OK,” I say, and it’s the truth.

INSIGHT  MAGAZINE'S NOTE AT THE END OF THE STORY: This story won first prize in the general short story category of our 1993 writing contest. This incident happened to a high school dassmate, who told Debra, “God let me be with my mother another whole year after that night.”

Exonerating Jadesy Horn

In CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES, a character I named Jadesy Horn tries to befriend me and I am unable to respond to her overtures because by that time I have been bullied into a chain link fence of silence that I can't break out of.  About a month later, I decide that Jadesy wasn't sincere about wanting to be friends because she invited everyone in our class to her birthday party except me.  In the narrative I describe how each desk, save one, had a crisp white invitation envelope placed upon it.  It is a classic episode in the life of a kid who doesn't fit in.

Through the next six school years, I viewed Jadesy Horn skeptically because I believed that she had excluded me, and only me, from her birthday party in the 7th grade.  And we never became friends.

But while writing the story all these years later, something occurred to me for the first time.  I realized that I had blamed Jadesy Horn for something she may not have done.  For one thing, such a mean act didn't fit into the rest of Jadesy's personality in all the time I knew her.  This isn't something that I could have rationalized at the age of 11.  Such is the luxury of time passing.

Now I wondered, how do I know that Jadesy didn't place an invitation on my desk?  How do I know that it wasn't snatched away by one of the other kids whose personalities did fit the crime?  I don't know it.  I assumed, and it was a reasonable assumption at the time because so many people in my world at the time were cruel.  But I may have been wrong about Jadesy Horn.

I almost feel as though I owe her an apology for sticking with the perspective that I had at the time.  But CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES isn't Jadesy's story.  It is mine, with the feelings and perceptions that I had then.  Right or wrong.

It is moments like this that make writing from real life a unique experience.  The author must constantly decide whether to write the story as it was lived or to adjust it in light of future perspective.  In order to maintain the integrity of the story, I believe that the author who writes from life should avoid as much as possible the intrusion of the older, wiser self.

But I still feel a twinge of guilt about Jadesy Horn.

Never Thought I'd See You Again

I wrote FIREFLIES and CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES with the insulation of decades between me and the events described. The colorful characters described in the books left my life at the same time that the narratives end, so it is a very odd feeling that suddenly people out of both books are resurfacing in my world.  I changed the names, of course.  There is nothing in the books that resembles slander, and I don't believe I wrote cruelly even about those who did me cruelly, but I have thought of them for so long as story characters that it is a bit unsettling to be reminded that they are and were real people.

I have always viewed life and people as stories.  It is part of how I survived some difficult years.  To see things in terms of plot, conflict and resolution instead of whining about the unfairness of life gives me an advantage as a writer.  What might have destroyed another person has made me richer.  Oh, the stories I can tell!  

  

But back to the reappearance of the characters from my books.  Might one say "YIKES!" ?  

This is the thing about writing from real life.  Perspective varies.  This was emphatically brought home to me when interviewing family members for PRECIOUS JEWELS, A SDA FAMILY SAGA.  People experience things differently depending on their position in the story, or upon the position of the person who passed the story down to them.  I compromised when recreating some of the incidents, basing what I think happened upon other supporting evidence from the time, reconciling disagreeing witnesses into something that made sense and was true to the essence of the characters involved.

But the stories in which I write from personal experience are different.  The power of the narratives is fueled by the intensity of which the narrator experiences them.  In FIREFLIES, I experienced intensely the loss of a friendship.  Writing that narrative, I realized that the child who impacted me so deeply  had no idea what was at stake for me when she eagerly embraced new friendships and moved forward without me, while I stubbornly refused to change, haunting our old secret places alone.  If she told the story, she would tell it differently, and I would probably be a minor character.  But FIREFLIES is my story, my perspective, and I imagine she will be quite startled how I felt if she reads it.

The same for CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES, whose characters are also starting to reappear in my world.  I wrote it as I lived it, but it may not be as they lived it, walking in their shoes, living their own blues.

Pictured: If you knew me then, the picture above is probably what you saw of me.  The notebook is the same one that I carried in the CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES years, scribbling Gothic novels while pretending to take notes in class.